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Boundaries Part One: It’s OK to Have Them!

Spoiler alert: I have SO MANY feelings about boundaries. Like, SO MANY.

I am a full-on boundaries nerd, and I can and will talk about them for-basically-ever. Therefore, I will be doing a series of posts about boundaries, and try and keep each post to one central thought on the topic. And the first thought, the most important thought, the alpha-and-omega of boundaries, is this:

You always have a right to your boundaries.

Boundaries are what define how we allow the outside world to interact with us. They determine how much access people get to have – whether and where they can touch us, how and in what ways they can talk to us, in what situations and to what extent we allow them to see us as we are.

Your boundaries are your own. You get to decide where they are, and for whom. Only you.

Let’s take a physical example – hugging – and run it through a few scenarios.

Hugging: It’s Not For Everyone!

Maybe you have a friend who is like, a really big hugger. You know the type. It’s just how they are! They’re friendly! It’s kind of sweet that they’re so huggy. But actually, you don’t like to be hugged. Maybe you used to – maybe you have hugged this friend in the past. But today you are feeling fragile, or you are feeling nauseous, or you have just decided COMPLETELY ARBITRARILY that you do not want to be hugged. You then have a right to NOT BE HUGGED.

The fact that you have hugged someone in greeting for a year, or a day, or your entire life does not obligate you to continue hugging them if you stop being comfortable with that.

The fact that someone is your friend, or your relative, or your romantic partner does not mean that you are obligated to hug them if you are not comfortable with that.

The fact that everyone else and their grandmother is okay with hugging this person, and thinks you are a strange little duckling for not doing so, does not mean you are obligated to hug this person if you are not comfortable with that.

People will often well-meaningly pressure you to disregard a boundary like this. They will say “Aw, c’mon, just hug! Everyone else is doing it?” They may say, “What’s the big deal?” They may say, “You’re hurting his feelings?” They are wrong to do this. Full stop.

No-one has the right to pressure you into disregarding your own boundaries. I don’t care how minor it seems. I don’t care who they are in your life. Your boundaries are your own, and only you get to decide where they are and how to enforce them.

If someone expresses a boundary to you, there are ways to clarify what they mean by it without pressuring them to disregard that boundary. In our hugging scenario, a way to do that would be to say “Okay, thanks for letting me know you don’t want to hug. Would you prefer a handshake? Would you prefer handshakes in the future as well?” This gives the person an opportunity to articulate where they are, because they have the assurance that you will respect their boundaries regardless.

I’m using hugs as an example here, but there are so many other ways to have boundaries in your life! You might have boundaries around what subjects you feel discussing with your boss, i.e. work stuff = okay, romantic life = off-limits. You might have boundaries around what you want to talk about with your parents: work stress = okay, your personal appearance or weight = off-limits. You might have boundaries around when friends can call you: 8am – 9am = okay, after your bedtime = off-limits. You might have boundaries around how sexual you will be on a first date: kissing = okay, touching below the neck = off-limits.

It can be hard to tell, sometimes, when a boundary you have is being violated. It can be hard to tell where your boundaries even are, especially if you have been taught your whole life that certain boundaries are “not okay” to have. Many people struggle to have boundaries with family members, for instance. Or people whose personal-space boundaries don’t fit within their societal norm may feel like those boundaries aren’t okay. But: Your boundaries are always okay. And you always deserve to have them respected.

That’s all for this week! Your homework, should you choose to accept it, is to keep an eye out in your daily life for times when you feel uncomfortable, anxious, irritated, ashamed, pushed-upon, or invaded. These feelings might be subtle. You might be very used to ignoring them, or to arranging your life so that you just don’t talk to the people who make you feel that way. But those feelings are often signposts for a boundary violation. They can help you figure out where your boundaries are, not just where people tell you they should be. And they will come in handy for the next post, where I’ll be talking about different strategies for articulating and enforcing your boundaries in daily life. Are you excited? Because I AM.

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27 thoughts on “Boundaries Part One: It’s OK to Have Them!”

I have a couple questions. It seems like your post is using an example that’s really hard to disagree with– I don’t think you’ll get any pushback here about people deciding who and when gets to give them hugs.

But boundary considerations get more interesting when we’re talking about non-physical boundaries. What about boundaries with the way other people get to talk to you? Or even be in your presence? If boundaries are totally sacrosanct, does that mean it’s everybody else’s responsibility to avoid you if you want to be alone? Here’s a more difficult example that I think perhaps not everybody will totally agree on (unlike the hug one). Say there’s somebody in my office who is uncomfortable with other people being in the bathroom when she needs to use it. That’s a clear boundary. But what is my responsibility in responding to that boundary? Must I knock loudly before entering the bathroom (which has multiple stalls, so this would normally be a very weird thing to do)? Always use a bathroom on a different floor because she might want to use the bathroom while I am in there otherwise?

Or what about with people too young or otherwise unable to consent beforehand? My nephew can’t really talk or express himself well enough to let you know when he is ok with being hugged or picked up. He will certainly let you know if he wants to be put back down again, though. So should I never pick him up, or hug him, or kiss him? Just in case it’s one of those times when he doesn’t want it? I don’t think I would have wanted that for myself as a toddler, not at all. But that seems to be a logical extension of what you’re saying.

I’m not trying to attack your views or anything, and I understand that you’ll be writing more on the subject. But I honestly don’t really know what the goal of this post was. If you’re going to make a huge sweeping generalization such as “you always have a right to boundaries,” I think it’s not a particularly useful observation unless you flesh it out at least a little bit. I don’t think I disagree that people have rights to their own boundaries. But I also don’t think that means other people have any independent obligation to respect those boundaries when doing so would interfere with our lives. So, sure, physically touching somebody who doesn’t want to be touched is an easy one, since that’s not a boundary that interferes with other people’s lives. But many other boundaries do.

But I honestly don’t really know what the goal of this post was. If you’re going to make a huge sweeping generalization such as “you always have a right to boundaries,” I think it’s not a particularly useful observation unless you flesh it out at least a little bit.

Some of us have spent a lot of our lives being told, either explicitly or implicitly, that we’re not allowed to have boundaries, or that the ones we have aren’t okay. The act of being told that it’s okay to have them helps a lot more than you might think.

Thanks for asking those questions! They are very thoughtful, and give me an opportunity to expand on my thoughts. I will definitely be addressing some, if not all, of these points in later posts.

The reason I wanted the first post to “You have a right to your boundaries” by itself is that many, many people, particularly women (and getting into how patriarchy affects boundary-setting is DEFINITELY a topic of a later post), are told that they do not have a right to their boundaries. Particularly in situations where somebody’s boundaries aren’t convenient for the people with power in their lives. It can be difficult to have conversations about the nuances of negotiating your boundaries if you have been trained to not even notice whether they exist.

For the example you bring up of everyone avoiding you if you want to be left alone – to an extent, yes. Which is not to say that if someone has said they left alone and then enters a crowded room, everyone else is obligated to leave. But if someone expresses a desire to be alone and goes off to do that, it IS boundary violation for someone to follow them and continue to interact. (There might be reasons to violate that boundary, but they’re extreme, like if you believe the person is in a state where they are a danger to themselves or others).

The next hypothetical, of someone who is uncomfortable using a bathroom with others, is more nuanced. Personal boundaries, while indeed sacrosanct, do not get to dictate how others use public or shared spaces, at least not in an authoritarian way. A public bathroom is not the same thing as your own body. However, I do want people to feel empowered in situations like that to ASK for what they need. If your coworker did express this need to you, and why it was important to them, would you feel that it was a serious imposition to knock on the bathroom door before entering? Just because it would be strange to do, is that too much of a compromise? That kind of a situation is a negotiation, but it’s one that I think many people wouldn’t even feel entitled to begin. Articulating boundaries and negotiating more complicated situations are deeeefinitely topics I plan on getting into a greater depth in later posts.

For the hypothetical regarding your nephew, I think you are actually touching on several issues there. I find that most toddlers are actually quite capable of communicating whether they want to be picked up or held, although they don’t do so verbally. If they don’t want to be held, they will shrink away from outstretched arms, they will squirm to be put down, they will move away. If your nephew is doing this consistently every time you pick him up, he is probably expressing a preference not to be held. In that case, it might be good to ask him if he wants a hug (which can be done verbally, or non-verbally) and see if he accepts the invitation. On the other hand, if he is typically very happy to be held, and only squirms to be put down sometimes, it’s totally fine to assume that he is happy to be held! The example of a hug that I used in my piece was showing an articulation of a changing boundary – where you have to express that you are no longer okay with something that used to be okay. People don’t typically negotiate new boundaries with each other every single time they interact; I don’t typically ask my friends if they would like a hug, if it is our habit to hug. However, if they seem especially guarded, or if they asked not to hug the previous time, then I would definitely check in! Thank you for helping me clarify that point. I also have a lot of feelings around boundaries with children in general, especially about how children are pressured out of a ‘no’ if they don’t want to hug relatives or friends of their parents. That is for SURE going to be its own post.

I agree that physical boundaries with children, and how parents or others pressure them to let relatives hug or kiss them when they don’t want it, is a huge issue. It’s one of the ways we teach kids from very young ages that they are not in control of their own bodies, and it’s really pretty awful.

It wasn’t a hypothetical about my nephew– it’s a real question. He’s not verbal enough to respond to being asked about what he wants, really (he mostly just ignores questions or maybe looks at you, then goes back to doing something else). Yes, he’s quite capable of making it really clear when he definitely wants to be held. But I do think a lot about how to interact with him in a way that makes it clear that he’s in control of his own body, especially when sometimes it really isn’t clear what he’s going for or wants.

“So, sure, physically touching somebody who doesn’t want to be touched is an easy one, since that’s not a boundary that interferes with other people’s lives.”

Hi Dave, I’m glad that’s something that is obvious for you, and that you’ve had majority experiences of others respecting your body! However, it’s not obvious to everyone, particularly to women, that it’s okay to set boundaries regarding your own body and to expect that those boundaries are respected.

For example: I would like to point out that in an all-women environment this weekend, I was twice hugged in situations in which I did not, in fact, want that hug and physically resisted hugging that person but they hugged me anyway. Once I was already physically closer than I would like to one person, and when she asked if I wanted a hug and I said no. She pressured me quite insistently before eventually backing off. Since this person was a friend of my mother’s, it was very difficult to stand my ground.

I’m sorry to hear that it’s hard to understand your nephew’s preferences; I wish you many enthusiastic hugs in the future. Just keep in mind that even when it’s clear what those preferences are, I (and I expect many other women) have had mid to poor responses to my clear boundary preferences.

I introduced my comment with “pushback here” to try to make it clear that, among readers of this blog, I think there’s general agreement on the hugging example, not to say that everybody always properly respects everybody else’s hugging boundaries (or even that most people do). I think you took one quote of what I wrote out of that context, which then makes it sound like I somewhat ridiculously think that we live in a world where nobody ever crosses others’ physical boundaries. I don’t think that. And I certainly never said anything like that’s been my majority experience and therefore that experience must apply to all other people, including people not of my gender, age, etc. So I think your interpretation here is a bit unfair.

Anyway, if your point is that, even if people reading what she’s saying about hugging others agree with her, it’s still very valuable to have your bodily autonomy verbally affirmed by others, particularly for people whose life experiences have shown that others do not routinely respect those boundaries, then great. As I said to trwexler, though, I’d love to hear more of Bridie’s thoughts about boundaries other than that it’s ok to have them (and she’s already provided other insightful comments).

I probably shouldn’t have included that last paragraph in my comment, and I’m sorry that I did so. I’m sure there’s a better way I could have phrased that, to make it clear that I was asking what the goal of the post was without sounding to you (and most likely others) like I thought everybody always respects other people’s boundaries and that this is a subject where there is general agreement among everybody, in both feminist and non-feminist spaces.

I’m sorry I misinterpreted your response, and put words in your mouth (in effect belittling your experience of violated boundaries). I’m coming from a super vulnerable place right now and appreciate your thoughtfulness and generosity in responding to me.

This post resounded so loud within me that I was really confused where you were coming from, when you were unsure about the goal of the post. It is so, so useful to have others tell me that it’s okay to have boundaries regarding my physical self. Bridie mentioned the distinction between public spaces and bodily autonomy – I read this post as just about bodily autonomy. And as a reader of this blog, I still needed to hear it. I think this message needs to be spread so hardcore. It’s not just a matter of validation of a sense we (as a society and as women) already have that we should be able to have and enforce boundaries, but also one of re-education. As trwexler mentioned, we are told over and over and over again that the boundaries we might have are not okay to have, and that leads to an erosion of a sense that it’s okay to have any boundaries, and hurts the sense of being able to trust ourselves and our uncomfortable feels. Telling people it’s okay to have boundaries is kind of revolutionary, and is (in my opinion) at the heart of feminism; I think it’s wonderful to have it articulated in a very simple and direct way. And as the beginning of her post says, you will have lots of opportunity to see more about Bridie’s thoughts on boundaries. I think this serves as a great introductory post.

Anyway, I hope this makes sense to you and helps clarify what I was trying to say before. It just.. it seemed so obvious to you that it’s okay to have boundaries. It’s not so obvious to everyone. And maybe that’s not what you meant, but that’s how I read it and what I was reacting to.

Your homework, should you choose to accept it, is to keep an eye out in your daily life for times when you feel uncomfortable, anxious, irritated, ashamed, pushed-upon, or invaded.

It’s interesting you should say this, because I felt uncomfortable with my boss today on a boundaries issue – not because I felt he had crossed a boundary with me, but because we hadn’t formally set boundaries on something we should have. The discomfort came because the boundaries were not well-defined, and I couldn’t be sure whether I was crossing them. So that can be a stressful experience too!

Definitely! I find poorly-defined or undefined boundaries to be SUPER anxiety-making, especially when I am worried that I may be violating someone else’s boundaries. That is such an important perspective man this series is going to have like 10,000 parts.

Another interesting point is that there are certain jobs where you can’t really set your own boundaries. For example, a lot of the work I do involves kids, sometimes quite young ones. My main difficulty is not in respecting their boundaries, since that’s something I’ve worked hard to train myself to do (which is not to say I don’t sometimes mess up). My biggest issue is finding ways to express my own boundaries in a way that doesn’t defeat the point of my job, part of which is being available to my students.

Luckily that work is something I chose, and I have enough privilege that I could probably be doing something else that would allow me to maintain stronger boundaries. Unfortunately a lot of the jobs where boundaries are least respected — I’m thinking service jobs, particularly — are minimum wage, and sometimes the only thing available to those with less education and cultural capital. In this sense, boundaries are related to multiple systems of oppression, and not just patriarchy.

If you have more thoughts on intersectionality and privilege around being able to maintain your boundaries, I invite you to send them to me and/or get in touch about doing a guest post! I want to write about this a lot.

I am not a hugger. The nuclear family I grew up in was not big on doing that. So I have to dodge people a lot just to avoid the awkward moment when they try to hug me and a dodge then would be obvious and open to multiple personal misinterpretations. The Cult of Nice uses some heavy guilt trips to make crossing boundaries an OK thing. It’s not. Not now, not ever.

When I was little, in my country, it was customary to give a kiss on the lips after not seeing your extended family or people like that for a longer period of time. It was something everybody did, like with hugs these days. But inside my core family we were never big on kissing, for instance, we didn‘t even do good-night kisses (had a different ritual). So, I was maybe 3-to-5 years old and in every family reunion I had to kiss all of my uncles and aunts, and nobody ever asked ‘would you like to give your uncle a kiss?’ or anything, and, now I look back, they seemed to ignore my squirming and freezing up and I hated it. My mother eventually taught my uncles that her children didn’t like it and they started just giving a peck on the cheek instead, which was better (although I would’ve probably preferred not to be touched at all). But to this day, I never look forward to the greeting part of meeting my extended family (even though there’s no more unwanted contact) and I don’t know if that’s because of those early memories or something else. I‘m not sure what point I‘m trying to make here, but I guess, I think, in the case of little kids whom you don‘t see often and don‘t know well (i.e. like I would see my uncles maybe twice per year), I‘d rather err on the side of not touching them. Just because I know I still freeze up and feel sort of violated remembering this stuff, even though I‘m sure it was free of malicious intent.

I want to share a nice story too 🙂 I live in Sweden now and they‘re very serious about personal space and boundaries here. Like, one of the first things Swedes tell you about themselves is ‘you don‘t hug a Swedish person’. From my limited experience, even if you hang out with people in a friendly setting (i.e. a board game club) for a number of months and become friendly, they still don‘t play loose with personal space. And it was in such a setting that someone, who wasn‘t a friend, exactly, just sort of friend-like, asked me if they could hug me for the first time in my life and it felt so nice because I got a chance to think about it and prepare and be comfortable about it, instead of just being sort of forced into the hug because the person in front of me is suddenly plunging ahead and my mind freezes up and for a very brief moment I usually feel the flight response or something flaring up even if I might want to hug that person, if I had a chance to decide that.

So yeah, I‘m excited about the forthcoming posts too!

(I‘m very glad I‘ve found this blog, not just because of this, but other topics here, too)

Personally, I feel that asking with body language is totally legit. It’s probably my go-to option when I am with people I feel pretty comfortable with or with whom I have a history of hugging. However, body language-asks come with a caveat, in that not everyone is as adept at reading body language, and that leads to a higher potential for miscommunication. So if I’m hugging someone for the first time or something like that, I *try* to ask with my words. I used to be a habitual hugger, so there’s definitely been an element of re-training myself!

I’ve been in several situations, either with people I have just met and connected with, or at work with managers and co-workers, where someone came in for the hug. I’ve never quite known how to tell people that I don’t really want to hug because this is my personal space and I only let a select few people in there. But I’ve always ended up hugging them anyway because I didn’t quite know how to set that boundary without being risking hurt feelings (especially with bosses!). And then just felt weird afterwards. I’d never even considered personal boundary issues with hugging until I was already in that situation. Next time, now that I have thought about it, I will be more upfront about how I feel.

Tomorrow, after work, I’ve volunteered to shoot a video with my friend Robby about how to hug someone who’s suffering from back pains. I plan to go over both gentle hugs and not-hugging, with examples provided of both scenarios. I may well quote extensively from this article and will probably link to it. Because it’s been like a week since I last mentioned DDP on youtube and that’s a week too long!